Or, as it should be called more appropriately: the American Museum of flight, or the Boeing Museum of flight. Either way, it’s a great place to visit on a rainy day in Seattle, just a 20 minute drive south.

The main attraction to me was, of course, the famous Concorde. It’s one of only three in North America.

For someone who is flying around the planet, but who is also somewhat afraid of flying, the Concorde is the one big regret for never being able to fly on it…

Not that I would ever have been able to pay a ticket for such a flight. But now it will be impossible, since they were decommissioned 11 years ago.

Ok, it is a total waste of fuel, and it was a huge financial loss for everyone involved, tax payers and airlines alike, even if they got the birds for free… But it is a fascinating machine, and such a beauty. The Delta wings with their slight curve, those engines underneath, the spiked nose…

Inside, it’s like a long thin tube, only four seats in each row, surprisingly low ceilings, tiny windows….

 

Up front in the cockpit, I was looking for the last captain’s hat. I heard that the last captain who flew it, stuck his hat into the gap that appeared when the plane was in super-sonic flight, as the heat from the friction of the air heated up the plane and made it grow by 300 mm, almost a foot…

It’s said that all the last captains did this before the plane cooled down for the last time and shrank to its normal dimensions. What a weird story, but I could not verify it, one could see the cockpit only from behind a glass panel.

Other notable planes include the very first Air Force One, that carried Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon, as well as many VIPs around the world. They also have the very first Boeing 747 on display, the test plane, but it is currently being re-vamped and restored, so one could not get inside.

Inside the museum, a vast collection of early planes, the history of flight, and notably Boeing, who had its headquarters right there at the Airport.

Today, the Boeing assembly lines are in Everett, a bit north of Seattle. With my friend Daniel, another frequent flyer and traveler, I will visit it Saturday.

The only criticism from my part would be how the museum manages to largely ignore Boeing’s competitor, Airbus, which accidentally has been outselling Boeing for most of the past decade, and has introduced a number of new technologies to aviation, be it the fly-by-wire technology or simply by building the biggest and best plane to fly, the gigantic A380…